


death of our humanity

by Spark_Writer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dubious Ethics, Humanity, M/M, Removal of emotion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2324129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spark_Writer/pseuds/Spark_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Essentially,” says Mycroft, “they’ll replace your heart with your head.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	death of our humanity

 

Old books speak of them.

 _Fairytales,_ times of passion and fury and love.

Once upon a time: the intolerable tenderness with which lovers once regarded each other. Over the kitchen table. Breakfast. Crumbs, butter knife, milk.

Children. Sweet laughter. Cherry polish chipping away on the little girls’ nails. Freckled lads shouting over their rugby matches. Small bodies wrestling in long grass. 

Families. Lips quirked around admissions of affection. Soft eyes. Fingers clasped in the cold.

The turning of faces toward the sky.

Humanity, maskless. 

But also, pain. So much pain.

The nauseous splitting of the heart.

 

\---

 

Feelings.

What are **feelings**?

 

\---

 

 

Little dark-haired infant, born screaming into a January world at precisely six-twenty in the morning.

He wails and screams and only falls silent for an older boy who comes over and puts a palm on that tiny bare chest and _holds_.

 

 

\---

 

The hospital lights are blinding.

His mother takes him in her arms because that is what mothers are supposed to do. His small head comes up and his eyes sweep over her features, achingly lucid for one fresh out of the womb. She looks down at the scrunched face. Inhales, exhales.

The Procedure is going to be hard for this child.

It is going to hurt.

 

\---

 

William Sherlock Scott Holmes arrives home two nights later.

Mrs Holmes settles him into his polished oak crib. Mr Holmes studies the little sleeping face for a long moment before moving away, tugging his older son with him.

They breathe in and out. The house settles around them, shifting into place to accommodate its new inhabitant.

Flames jump in the grate.

On his knees, sitting by the warm, the storm-eyed elder brother eyes the cradle and then his father, lips twitching into a downward arc at the slight shake of head he sees there. Cheeks flushing, he presses his mouth firmly shut.

Mrs Holmes declares a sudden and desperate need for tea. She absconds to the kitchen.

The baby, tenderly-veined creature wrapped in Egyptian cotton, opens his mouth and howls.

Mr Holmes turns a page of _Moby Dick._

The boy by the fireside glances up. Grins. Gives a brief howl of his own. Solidarity.

Neither son notices the disapproving paternal glare.

 

\---

 

They call the baby Sherlock.

What an otherworldly little boy he grows up to be.

 

\---

 

“Stop,” Mycroft commands.

They’re standing by the river. Sherlock’s bare toes are in the water. It’s cold. Sharp. He adores it.

“ _Stop_ ,” Mycroft says again.

As if that’s going to stop Sherlock from bobbing after him as per usual, mind drenched with curiosity and diamond-light. He employs his favourite word. One syllable. Round in the mouth. Tongue behind the teeth. “No.”

“You have to.” His brother’s face is lit with a strange desperation, pallor anemic despite the hardy sunlight.

Sherlock is adamant. “ _No_.” Brings his knee up, slams his sole down in the mud: emphasis.

“Don’t be difficult.” There is deep scorn in Mycroft’s voice.

“I’m not.”

“You can’t, Sherlock, you won’t be able to follow me like this anymore. Not after they—not after my surgery. You must understand.”

Sparrows swirl overhead, almost lazily.

“I don’t care. I’ll follow you anyway.”

“I won’t want you.”

It’s a sting, just beside the sternum, very near to Sherlock’s fast kicking heart. He blinks.

“The surgery’s going to change me, Brother. Make me immune to certain things. Emotions, sentiment. Other such impediments.”

“And me.”

Pause.

A fawn bounds through the grass to their left.

“And you.”

Mycroft has always seemed exempt from the trials of this terrible ritual. Sherlock tries to fathom an unfeeling automaton taking his brother’s place.

He swallows.

In the pit of his stomach there is a tree and it is losing all its leaves. “What shall we do?”

“Carry on as usual. Nothing we can do.”

“But then I’ll have only—“ Prickling heat floods the corners of his eyes. “Only Redbeard.”

“A more than sufficient companion, I’d say.”

“Canines can’t conduct experiments. Or raid pirate ships. Or teach their owners how to read Morse code.” He shifts his gaze. “Can they?”

“If they try very hard, perhaps so.” Mycroft looks at Sherlock, his eyes pits of resignation. “It’s not all bad, you know. I think you’ll be relieved when you finally have your Procedure.”

“No, I won’t.”

“But imagine.” Mycroft’s tone is wistful. “You won’t feel pain ever again. Don’t you want that? Doesn’t everyone?”

Sherlock withdraws his feet from the river. “You won’t feel _anything_ ever again.”

“Yes,” says Mycroft. His mouth performs something more complicated than a smile. “How wonderful.”

They walk home.

 

\---

 

There are many names for it.

_Accelerated evolution._

_The upgrade._

_Improved human capability._

_A comprehensive streamlining of the Homo Sapiens._

And the favourite:

 _Necessity_.

 

\---

 

“Essentially,” says Mycroft, “they’ll replace my heart with my head.”

“Why,” asks Sherlock, “can’t you use them both?”

“Unnecessary.”

But it isn’t.

It really isn’t.

Redbeard bays from out on the lawn and Sherlock bolts thankfully from the house, crashing into a mess of tongue and teeth and russet fur with shaky affection. He drops to his knees, rolling onto his back while Redbeard nuzzles his carotid, and they pant together, starry-eyed inexorably.

From the door: “Don’t soil your clothes.”

Sherlock thrusts his tongue out at Mycroft, spreads his fingers to catch the dying of the light. “Howl with us?”

The elder Holmes retreats into the house with merely a shake of the head.

Sherlock doesn’t take his eyes off his brother’s retreating back. Just lowers his chin and roars till his throat is raw.

 

\---

 

When Mycroft returns from hospital, Sherlock is out with the apiaries. A solar system all about him, an entire galaxy comprised of black and saffron and the contented buzzing of duty fulfilled.

His mother beckons him inside. He’s reluctant to go.

In the sitting room, Mycroft is perched delicately upon the sofa, umbrella handle resting in the curve of his elbow.

“Hello, Mycroft.” Sherlock keeps his gaze affixed to the rug.

“Good afternoon.”

Mr Holmes passes a mug of Oolong to the new invalid. “Wasn’t too frightening, was it, lad?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Sherlock cannot marry this blandly smiling creature to the image in his head, the brother with whom he once laughed and screamed and ran wild all over the downs. He balances on one leg. Leans forward. Asks, “How are you feeling?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Mycroft says, exhaling on a laugh. “Would I?”

No he bloody wouldn’t.

Sherlock goes to his room.

“You can stay,” he says to Redbeard, who’s curled on his unmade bed. “And sod the rest of them.”

They lie together until the stars come out. And then they make wishes.

On stupid things.

Chemistry sets. Scalpels. Honeycombs. The Queen of England. 

It’s odd:

Sherlock never quite laughs the same again.

 

\---

 

Years pass. Sherlock begins to research:

_Is there a way out of The Procedure?_

_How to refuse The Procedure?_

_How to reverse The Procedure._

_Reasons The Procedure is damaging to the human conscience._

A librarian catches him Googling these less than satisfactory questions. Scowls.

“What do you think you’re playing at?”

“Curious, that’s all,” he answers easily, gathering his belongings and heading out into the gleam of dawning autumn.

In his hand a motely list of humans who’ve managed to escape The Procedure.

Rebels, the echo of a race nearly expunged.

 

\---

 

Redbeard is licking at the shell of his ear.

Sherlock flings an arm over the expanse of warmth at his side.

“Daft git.”

And again, right against the downy muzzle.

 “Daft git.”

And again, fingers carding through long fur.

“Daft _git_. I know it’s morning. I know.”

 

\---

 

“I detest you!”

Cold, unctuous, indifferent Mycroft, standing in the doorway to the bedroom like a great toxic scab. Absorbing the impact of Sherlock’s words with nary a blink.

“How could you tell them? How _could_ you?”

“I am only looking out for your best interest.”

“I don’t want The Procedure! That’s precisely why I was looking for a way out of it. It’s no right of yours to go telling on me to Mother and Father. You smoke those horrible cigarettes and _I_ don’t tattle on you, do I?”

“Apples and oranges, brother.”

“Why did you tell?”

“I was concerned you might actually believe the rubbish _these people_ —“ Mycroft waves the handwritten list— “are spouting about so-called ‘destructive effects’ of The Procedure.”

Sherlock punches his mattress. “You’re nothing but a robot. Get out.”

“Don’t be so childish.”

“Don’t insult me!”

They watch each other. Mycroft is a canvas bare of pigment and Sherlock is Van Gogh’s bloody _Starry Night._

“All lives end,” says Mycroft.

“Don’t.”

“All hearts are broken. Caring,” his brother continues, thumbing the doorframe, “is not an advantage, Sherlock.”

“Leave.”

So he does. Drops the list on the carpet as he goes.

Sherlock picks it up, running an eye down the column of names. Then he rips it to pieces and scatters the whole thing out his window.

The scraps fall like ash; a death of sorts.

 

\---

 

Dinner:

Stilted, cold, not meeting Mycroft’s eyes.

Mrs Holmes spoons root vegetables onto their plates. It doesn’t break the ice. Sherlock picks up his fork and knife, clenches them. And then.

The beleaguered shriek of an automobile’s skidding tires, a tremendous bark— Sherlock’s heart is failing him.

 “Where’s Redbeard?” he asks very low.

Mr Holmes glances at the empty corner and grips the table’s edge spasmodically before rising and barreling out the front door and into the street.

He’s back after only a minute, face tight like that of an artificially engineered android trying for sympathy.

He licks his lips. “Right. We’ll get you a new one.”

Sherlock tips forward and vomits all over the mashed parsnips.

Mycroft puts his fork down.

 

\---

 

Ashes in the river, in the air. 

“I’ll never have a dog again,” he tells Mycroft.

“I know.”

 

\---

 

Walking through a violet dusk weeks later, Sherlock trips over a severed femur and enjoys a perverse exuberance while kneeling over his first corpse.

How strange it is to breathe around the deceased. How strange the contrast of his steady heart with the body beneath his skimming touch, pulseless. How dizzying the reverence.

Sherlock’s psyche takes to the dead like an old lover. His mind begins to stir, its machinery shivering beneath centuries of dust, unfolding with ever-increasing acceleration.

A click.

A slotting into place.

A purpose where there was none.

He raises his eyes to the setting sun. He knows, now. He knows.

But there is so little time left.

 

\---

 

Georgiana Tillman goes to hospital. Comes back blank.

Harvey Flint goes next. Reappears flat-lipped.

Leanne Brown. Stops wearing the cardigan with the embroidered dragonflies.

Freddie Quincy. Dead man walking.

Thomas Halloran.

Darcy Rogers.

Louis Watts.

Chloe Gregson.

Watch:

Watch as the sharp light is taken out of them, taken from them.

Watch as they return to their seats, barren of sensation.

Watch as they forget themselves.

 

\---

 

 

“Thirteen years is not enough,” Sherlock declares, wincing as the doctor prods his radial vein with a needle.

 “Hush, lad.”

There are files confirming his health. Stacked upon tables and chairs, a declaration of his impending doom. Mr Holmes catches his eye. Inhales. Sherlock looks away, out the window to the sweetness of sunlight and shadow.

“Won’t be much longer now,” says Doctor Richter, withdrawing the needle. “Few months, perhaps.” 

Sherlock redresses with haste.

In the taxi, he doesn’t look at his father.

“Sherlock, you’ll be happier—“

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I know what it is to exist Before. I remember. This is so much better.”

Sherlock twists round. “You’re wrong.”

“You can’t know that unti—“

“I don’t need to wait. I know you’re wrong. I know it now. You’ve been brainwashed, anesthetized, sedated. You can’t think clearly. Your every step is influenced by this nightmarish fog. You’re numb.”

“What I am is free of pain.”

“I can’t think of anything worse. We weren’t meant to be devoid of all emotion. How revoltingly dull.” Sherlock sneers.

“You’ll appreciate it one day.”

“I don’t look kindly on biological tampering.”

“Mark my words, Sherlock." His father takes a sip of oily espresso. "You will."

 

\---

 

“What are you going to do for your last day?” asks Simon Dyer, nymphet boy; red-cheeked and grass-stained and _edible._

Sherlock’s heart pounds. “I don't know.”

“Could go to the fair.”

“Boring.”

“Walk in the orchard?”

“Mediocre.”

“Wade in the sea?”

“Tiresome.”

“Train to London?” 

Sherlock breaks into a beam.

 

\---

 

They sit on hard plastic seats across from each other, knees touching, pressed shin to shin. Simon leans in and Sherlock sways forward, a satellite tugged into orbit. Wool tickles at his chin. His heartbeat is a bass drum, throbbing and thrumming, sending blood through his body, his face, his…his…

He presses his knees together, dismay and excitement shivering in equal measure at the pressure swelling in his groin.

“Would you,” says his companion, eyes falling shut, “just this once, while you’re still _—like_ this.”

Sherlock presses his mouth hard against Simon’s.

It's like kissing a tornado.

 

\---

 

 

“Did you know,” says Mycroft, “that when the doctors cut into your skull there is going to be a fine mist of dust? Shaved marrow and calcium flying everywhere?”

He moves through the long grass, out-of-focus at the edges like a dying smoke ring. Looks older than he does in reality; a harsh quality about his eyes and mouth that makes Sherlock’s throat tight.

“That’s a myth.”

“Not entirely.”

“They make a minute incision beside the prefrontal cortex. No one bloody _saws_ the cranium open.”

Mycroft pulls a Queen Anne’s Lace from its root. “There will be scar tissue. So much of it.”

“Don’t exaggerate.”

“And blood.”

“Trivial.”

“You will scream, Sherlock. You will _howl_.”

“You didn’t. Why should I?”

“You and I are different, brother.”

“Not so very.”

“You forget that when we were small I would trap insects and keep them in a jar, but you could never bear to do so yourself.”

“What sort of proof is that?”

“You’ve more human error than I ever possessed.” Mycroft twists the flower between his fingers. “It’ll be a greater loss for you than me.”

“ _You_ forget that my greatest happiness comes in the form of a battered corpse.”

“Yes, so that you can avenge them posthumously by identifying their killer and restoring their dignity. What a heartless pursuit.”

Sherlock breathes in and out. Above him, outside the confines of his mind, there are three doctors. They lift their scalpels. They lift their needles. They lift their chins.

“Steady, brother.” Mycroft ripples; sunlight glances off his back in wild flares.

Sherlock wants to call out. He is, for the first time in a very long while, afraid. But his elder brother is moving away from him now, cresting the hill and pushing toward the flaming horizon, growing bigger even as he strides further away and Sherlock’s heart twists in on itself, smashing against the calciferous limits of his rib cage like a prisoner desperate to feel freedom just once more. He gasps at the bite of the needle slipping into his neck. His head falls back against the examining table, vision blurring into white.

This is the way the world ends, as the poem goes.

On the apex of that great hill, Mycroft lets the flower drop from his fingers and crushes it quietly beneath his heel.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
